Likelihood to Recommend IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS former IBM Rational DOORS profits very much from the mighty market position it had till today. It had been the most favored requirement engineering tools suite with the highest investments in the infrastructure concerning hardware, software, and knowledge sources. It was embedded in knowledge sources of test stands, hardware labs, and knowledge database servers. It allowed for some of the highest profit changes and made the fame with it. But the paradigms of requirements engineering change. If not were superseded by completely different approaches for the target solution worlds. The foremost position in the selling tables is unstable if changes are not solved or coped with by the strategist at IBM and their customers. Since the highly successful alternative suits are already at the market, and some are from IBM already the lifecycle for IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS is at the later highs. But the suite is still at the very top and very popular. There are still many problems unsolved and many wishes at the customers to make the use more comfortable and efficient at the overall level. If the time of setting up the software package is passed the adoption get more extended and complicated. There is a lot of work at the stage around and the expertise will be required for a long time from now.
Steffen Jäschke Projektspezialist bei Steffen Jäschke EinzUnt Physik, Berechnungen
Read full review We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems
Read full review Pros Easy to use with well defined template and user defined fields. New team can setup a project area easily by copying an existing template and adding customized fields for their special needs. It can be used during almost the whole project cycle and give us a better view and control on the projects. Lots of built-in report functions. Read full review Projector is a very well designed tool for project management. It has allowed us to eliminate a number of auxiliary tools for project timelines and WBS for the vast majority of our projects. Time and expense entry is intuitive and quick for our staff. Our forecasting and resource management capability has improved greatly with Projector and allows us to grow our team efficiently with minimal additional administrative burden. Reporting is extremely robust. It does require some time to really get a handle on the full functionality of the reporting tool, but once you do, you can get almost any kind of report you want out of the system! Read full review Cons Wireframes are quite basic. If you need intuitive and interactive wireframes to elaborate the requirements. you probably need to define outside the tool and then upload as image. ER (define data dictionaries) modeling is not there. Use case modeling is quite basic. You can visualize the use case and actors relation but the tool does not enforce the rules. Does not support offline work. Read full review Release management process needs to be improved. Currently no facility is provided to test the impact of new releases in a sand-box. This introduces business risk if there are interfaces into Projector PSA as part of it's use in the business. Read full review Likelihood to Renew At the moment we are required by contract to continue to use the IBM DOORS software for our current client. Given that it can be expensive, if we were to use it after our current client's needs were met, we would have to secure other projects in order to justify the continued use of the software.
Read full review We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.
Read full review Usability The UI is terrible and not intuitive. Users need training in order to complete tasks. Much like SAP, it's not the clearest tool. The tracing feature is especially complicated because you must write the scripts yourself. There is a learning curve. Also, even the setup, installation, and logging in each time takes a considerable amount of time.
Read full review Desktop interface feels complex to new users.
Read full review Reliability and Availability In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.
Read full review Support Rating It does a basic job and has the potential to complete some robust reporting tasks, however, it really is a clunky piece of software with a terrible user interface that makes using it routinely quite unpleasant. Many of our legacy and maintenance projects still use DOORS but our department and company use many alternatives and are looking for better tools.
Read full review Implementation Rating No problems
Read full review Alternatives Considered It was easier to do all the change management-related activities, even configurations were handled very effectively. New process definitions and initiatives made it easier for better project deliverables. Effective resource allocations and better reporting and defect management. The overall cost of the tool is great too and well within budget.
Read full review We did pursue Quick Arrow another tool that was similar. We found that be in inflexible in use. Projector allows a lot of flexibility in setup. Our organization has very specific business processes and we were able to set up Projector to work with those processes. Several other systems we tried were not as flexible in allowing set up to our needs.
Read full review Return on Investment If you can setup DOORS to your project, you will experience lower costs. Also, less rework in the project, which means lower times to achieve your milestones. Finally, the cost of setting up a related project is considerably lower, and the estimates obtained in the process are much more precise. Read full review Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects. Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data. Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective Read full review ScreenShots Projector PSA Screenshots